Sarah: An Anecdotal Memoir
William Roberts was an artist of marked individuality who for more than sixty years
was supported by his no less individual wife, Sarah. Witty, spirited, courageous,
ready for adventure even in her ninetieth year, she dedicated her life to his while
remaining true to herself. 'No time spent with Sarah was ever wasted,' an obituarist remarked. 'Her acute powers of observation, her human insight, her eye for detail,
her sometimes acerbic (but never malicious or hurtful) tongue made her a delightful
conversationalist. After a meeting with her, one felt more alive, more aware of the
possibilities of life and art.'
Pauline Paucker, the chairman of the William Roberts Society, knew Sarah well during
the last twenty years of her life, and has written Sarah: An Anecdotal Memoir (64 pages, A5), in which she conveys the character of someone as worth celebrating as was her husband.
Copies are available by sending a cheque – made out to the William Roberts Society – for £5 (inc. UK post and packing) to Marion Hutton, Lexden House, Tenby SA70 7BJ.
The following extracts describe Pauline's first outing with Sarah, having been appointed
her walking companion, and an incident during a later outing:
'
My friend Norah Meninsky and I are going out walking on Hampstead Heath. Would you
like to join us? I'll come round the corner to collect you and we'll take the no.
24 bus up. Norah will meet us there.'
Norah, large and handsome, was, as I had guessed, the widow of William Roberts's artist
friend Bernard Meninsky, his second wife. His first, Sarah told me later on the way
home, had run off with a very good-looking chemist living opposite them and had left him with two small boys to look after. Norah, she said, had coped splendidly.
'She was one of Cochran's Young Ladies, in the chorus, though I wonder how, with those
legs, don't you?' There seemed no answer to this.
As we walked from the bus across to the Heath, Sarah darted into one or two shops
on the Green. Norah called across, 'Sarah, come out of there, we are here to walk
on the Heath. You have a butterfly mind.'
Norah, I found later, believed herself to be intellectually superior to Sarah, who
often played the fool to disguise her innate shrewdness.
We were soon moving swiftly towards Kenwood, Sarah then in her late sixties and still
a brisk walker, Norah likewise. They were exchanging anecdotes of their pasts, scandalous
stories of friends of long ago.
Sarah, feeling I was left out, turned to me and said, 'You must excuse us. One of
the few pleasures of old age – and let me tell you there are very few – is finding out about people you knew, rounding off their lives. You read an obituary
or a biography and then you see why she played that dirty trick on you or why he
disappeared so suddenly.'
Here she turned back to Norah, who was saying, 'I'm not suggesting that she was always
on the game, but after he left her there was certainly an episode.'
'Well, it would have been before she went to live with what's-his-name and probably
no more than an episode. Even so . . . '
And on they went.
'I know every path on the Heath,' said Sarah, pointing out to someone the way.
*
One sunny day, after we had crossed the park to Baker Street, a seemingly empty open-topped
tourist bus pulled up at a nearby stop. Three unauthorised passengers on the top
deck – three young boys who'd sneaked a ride – were being shouted at by the driver to get off. They jumped down on to the metal
roof of the bus shelter, the crash as they landed sounding like an explosion – and this was at a time of IRA activity in London.
The few women waiting in the shelter screamed in fright; the laughing boys bounded
on to the pavement and ran, ducking and weaving among the people in the street.
Sarah, coming up, put out her left arm and grabbed one of them in a skilled move,
swinging her other arm round to clout him on the head. He ran off yelling with indignation.
I was struck by Sarah's rapid response to the fleeing boy – it looked like a drawing by Phil May for Punch: the snatch, the cuff, the boy ducking, his arm up to shield himself.
'I'm not saying you did wrong, no,' said a passing man, 'but you could be had up for
assault. Do you know that?'
Sarah ignored him and marched on to board the newly arrived 74 bus. The women who'd
been so startled were already sitting there and telling the other passengers what
had happened, pointing to Sarah with approval and miming her actions: 'She grabbed
one of them like this and biff! That lady there!'
Sarah ignored them and pointedly talked to me.
The rightness and vigour of her gestures can be seen in so many of Roberts's paintings
for which she had posed: pinning up a dress, beating a rug, scrubbing steps, washing
a child.
'I can't come out today, I'm posing,' she would say. It was obvious that it was not
only for the usual portrait that she was the model: Roberts needed no other.
WR at auction
At Christie's South Kensington on 14 December Skittle Alley c.1927 sold for £7,500.
Skittle Alley c.
1927
© The Estate of John David Roberts
At Christie's on 13 December Mahomet's Ride c.1967 sold for £73,250.
Mahomet's Ride c.
1967
© The Estate of John David Roberts
The previous evening at Christie's The Poor Family 1921–3 was unsold (estimate £200,000–£300,000)
The Poor Family 1921–3
© The Estate of John David Roberts
At Sotheby's sale of modern and post-war British art on 14 November Checkmate, a watercolour study for The Chess Players 1929–30, sold for £94.850.
The Chess Players – colour study (aka Checkmate) 1929–30
© The Estate of John David Roberts
At Bonhams on the same day the watercolour Evening in Oban c.1946 was unsold (estimate £20,000–£30,000).
Evening in Oban c.1946
© The Estate of John David Roberts
At Sotheby's evening sale of modern and post-war British art on 10 May, WR's The Chess Players 1929–30 sold for £1,161,250 and Boxers 1914 for £229,250, more than twice the previous auction records for, respectively, an oil and
a work on paper by the artist.
Boxers, 1914
© The Estate of John David Roberts
The Chess Players, 1929–30
© The Estate of John David Roberts
When the sale continued the next morning, In the Straight c.1949 (pencil and watercolour) sold for £67,250 and Day Out on the River 1978 (oil on canvas) for £58,850.
In the Straight, c.1949
© The Estate of John David Roberts
Day Out on the River, 1978
© The Estate of John David Roberts
On 23 May Christie's sold Masked Revels 1953 (oil on canvas) for £181,250:
Masked Revels, 1953
On 24 May Christie's sold Parallel Bars 1970 (watercolour) for £21,875:
Parallel Bars, 1970
© The Estate of John David Roberts
________________________________________________________________________
Collection of WR images, and requests for others
David Cleall is in the process of updating his listings of Roberts's works. He now
has nearly one thousand recorded images, and his collection of reproductions has
been boosted by Ruth Artmonsky giving him her own considerable collection of copies.
David has now accumulated probably six or seven hundred reproductions of WR's work – surely the most comprehensive collection anywhere. He has been most generous in sharing
his work with others, and Andrew Heard, who organised the acclaimed Roberts retrospective
in 2004, and Andrew Gibbon Williams have acknowledged their debt and gratitude to him.
David would be very grateful if he could be notified of any reproductions of rare
Roberts work via
A picture that David would be particularly interested in acquiring a reproduction
of is The Bowling Alley (1927–8).
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